And on the archaeological fromt. Well I'm trying to finish off an Italian fieldwalking site I did the pottery for last year. I now have a consistent paper and digital record - the drawings I made relate to their codes in the database. Just some tweaking to make sure that I have taken into consioderation all the pottery from each pick up area ( the pre roman and the medeival and later) and that the field names were transcribed properly, and then I can relate the field names to the designated sites ( where the nuumbers of finds get into usable numbers and then we can see if we can charecterise site types. 

I have managed a fair few dated parrallels so far. My date distributon follows the same pattern everyone else gets for Etruria - reasonable stable growth, with short wobbles because of civil wars etc followed by steady rise tillthe end of the second century then collapse.

All the villa excavations I could find have the same pattern 0 villas are abandoned at the end of the second century. SOme are resettled say 100 years later or are just never reoccupied.

What is going on? is this the beginning of the C3 'crises or change' ? or is there something about villa economies that don't last beyond 3 or 4 generations? Is that the same for stately homes - often a model for how the highest status villas worked? I keep trying to revisit Brideshead revisted (sorry) Castle then new house then barracks  in WW2. what happens then? the sything of the aristocracy by income tax and irrelevence?

discuss